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Bird nests and laws

July 16, 2013

I discovered two bird nests in my backyard while I was pruning. The timing of the second discovery had to do with when some of my neighbors go on vacation and I can prune my bushes on my property without having to parry back conversation. I wondered about whether it was okay to remove the nests. I was pretty sure they were no longer in use.

One nest was in the grapevine, about where there was one last year. That one ended smashed on the ground after a storm during the fall. The other was also close to where I had seen a nest other years — in the great rambling rose bush that is intertwined, in places, with one of the hedges.

I found online the legal rules about removing bird nests. Pigeons, sparrows, and starlings, I think it is, have little protection, but other common migratory birds do have some protection from us humans. I also read about parasites in bird nests, and did notice some earwigs in the ones in my yard.

Anyway, this to me was just another random chapter in yardwork and suburban homeownership.

And then I got one of those emails from The New Yorker about what’s in the current issue, and I read a piece called “Operation Easter,” by Julian Rubinstein, about high crimes involving stealing bird eggs out of nests in Scotland and England.

Clearly there was no causative connection between my nest issues and this article, and it’s hard even to find a connection between them through something conscious I could have done. One could write off the confluence as coincidence, but I think of it as a good example of synchronicity. I suspect synchronicity is driven by some third aspect of it that we don’t see — for example, perhaps by a solar flare of energy from somewhere, washing over us and playing out in a variety of similar ways.

A footnote: the birds may not be nesting in my yard at this point in the season, but they bathe in the two low bird baths in the yard.